


Hard to Leave When You Can't Find the Door

by celeste9



Category: Primeval
Genre: Awkwardness, First Kiss, Gift Fic, Locked In, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While being locked in a lab with Lester wasn't the worst situation Connor had ever been in, it was still pretty bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard to Leave When You Can't Find the Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StealingPennies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StealingPennies/gifts).



> Belated birthday fic for stealingpennies, hope you enjoy it! Fills the Trope Bingo square, 'locked in'. Beta by fififolle, title from Joe Walsh.

“Note to self: ARC security can, in fact, be too secure, regardless of Captain Becker’s opinion.”

Connor gave up on fiddling with the locks to the lab door and turned to Lester. “The good news is, no one you don’t want is getting in or out of here.”

In lieu of an actual response, Lester crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Nota bene: when dealing with Mr Temple, always be on familiar ground. I am never speaking with you outside my office again.”

“I’m sure they’ll realise we’re in here soon.”

Lester didn’t say anything.

“Danny’s probably crawling through the ventilation system as we speak.”

“I expect that was meant to be a heartening statement.” Lester didn’t need to say anything else to indicate that he was not heartened.

Connor let his back slide down against the wall until he was sitting on the floor, folding his legs up and hugging his arms around his knees. It had to be said, while being locked in a lab with Lester wasn’t the worst situation he’d ever been in, it was still pretty bad.

If only it had been anyone but Lester.

Because Lester was… complicated.

Abby hadn’t asked Connor to move back in yet. He was less upset about that than he would have thought. He liked living with Lester. Lester’s flat was amazing, so much nicer than anywhere Connor had lived in his life, and he was also eating better than he did at Abby’s. Lester liked to cook. When he had the time, he made big fancy meals designed for equally delicious leftovers and even the quick, simple meals he made after work were mouth-watering.

Lester had a lot of rules, but generally Connor ignored them. That made Lester irritated and sarcastic, but he never did much beyond snap at Connor a bit. Working at the ARC had taught Connor that Lester’s bark was definitely worse than his bite, at least when it came to people he actually liked.

Connor was fairly certain that Lester did like him, outward appearances aside. He didn’t think he’d still be living there if Lester didn’t like him. He also didn’t think Lester would put up with his dirty socks lying about or his messes in the kitchen, and then there had been that incident with Connor’s drunken meltdown after the professor... Well, anyway, Connor figured he’d know if Lester truly didn’t care for him.

The way Connor felt about Lester was another thing altogether.

At first, Lester had just been this nebulous figure in a smart suit, treating Connor like a sometimes useful, always annoying, vaguely distasteful problem. It wasn’t like that any more. Lester had slowly grown into an actual person, an actual person who had a life and emotions beyond frustration and impatience. He cared about what went on at the ARC, beyond what it meant for his career. He cared about what they did and who they saved and what happened to the people who worked for him.

And Connor maybe sort of fancied him a little bit. A smidgeon.

Okay, possibly more than that.

The realisation had come as a surprise. It wasn’t something he actually wanted to think about most of the time, you know? But Connor found that he liked sitting with Lester at dinner, talking. He liked it when the corners of Lester’s mouth twitched, like he was going to smile if he’d been a normal person. He liked the brightness in Lester’s eyes and he liked watching Lester’s long fingers when he was cooking or typing or tying the knot of his tie. He liked the way Lester’s wrists looked beyond the end of his cuffs. He liked the way Lester smelled and he might even sometimes go into the bathroom when Lester wasn’t around to sniff his cologne.

Oh, God. He was pathetic. Really, it was just sad. He was also sure that Lester would kick him out in a heartbeat if he had any idea.

As the minutes ticked by, Lester gave in and sat down on the floor as well, folding his arms neatly around his bent knees. His trouser legs rode up, revealing his black socks. Connor bet even Lester’s socks were ridiculously expensive. Some kind of fancy silk, probably.

“You could sit on one of the tables,” Connor suggested. It didn’t seem right for Lester to be sitting on the floor.

Lester chose not to reply. Maybe hopping up onto a lab table was even more undignified than sitting on the floor. It was too bad there weren’t any stools; Connor should have paid more attention when he’d come in. Not that he’d been expecting to be stuck in here for any length of time.

“It can’t be too long,” Connor said. Abby said he was like a puppy, endlessly optimistic. He figured that was good in a situation like this - he didn’t think Lester was naturally optimistic at all.

“I think I’ve had this nightmare before.”

“Me, too. Usually I’m naked, though.”

“Oh, dear God,” Lester muttered.“Thank you for that terrifying image.”

Connor’s cheeks felt warm, like he was blushing. He was trying not to think about what sort of underwear Lester favoured. His mind persisted in picturing silk boxers. He bet they were incredibly soft and felt incredible against your skin, and he really needed to stop thinking about Lester and skin and underwear.

“How does your nightmare end?” Connor asked, hoping it would distract him.

Lester’s green eyes flickered towards him. “The usual way. We gain a deeper understanding of each other and most of the time there’s some sort of embarrassing confession of affection. Isn’t that how these things typically go?”

Connor was definitely blushing. He coughed in a tactical delay, but that probably only further drew Lester’s focus. “Dunno. I’ve never had _that_ dream.” He was pretty sure he’d seen it on Star Trek, though. And Buffy. And about every television show ever. Had Lester seen it on TV? “Wait. Do you watch TV?”

Lester raised one eyebrow. “Mr Temple, this may come as a shock to you, but I do have an actual life beyond the ARC. I thought perhaps the fact that you have been _living in my flat_ might have clued you in to that.”

“Oh, right.” Connor felt sort of deflated, and also stupid. He felt stupid around Lester a lot. He wondered if it was just him or if Lester had that effect on everyone. Probably the latter. At least, he hoped so. It made him feel better knowing he wasn’t alone. “You don’t watch TV though. Not that I’ve seen.”

“Astonishingly enough, I exist when you aren’t around. Why do you think I own a television if not to use it?”

“Because it would be weird not to have one?” Really, who didn’t have a TV? Even serial killers had TVs. Probably. To maintain the illusion that they were just like everyone else. Not that Lester was a serial killer. Connor was fairly confident of that, at least.

“Do I look like I put much stock in appearances?” When Connor opened his mouth, Lester dismissed him. “Never mind. I don’t believe I want to know your answer.”

“Do you ever want to know what I think?”

“Not typically, no.”

Connor sighed.

“Oh, don’t tell me _that_ hurt your feelings. Must you be treated with kid gloves?”

“No, I _mustn’t,_ but I do sometimes need to be treated like a human being,” Connor burst out before he even knew what he was saying.

Lester’s eyes closed and opened again in a slow blink. “Apparently I’ve hit a nerve.”

“No.” Connor shifted slightly so that he was angled away from Lester, but not too much. He didn’t want to be obvious about it but he also didn’t want to look at Lester.

Which was problematic given the situation.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a nice person.”

“That’s just you making excuses for being a bastard. ‘Oh, sorry, I can treat you like crap because that’s just what I do. I’m not a nice person.’ And it’s rubbish, anyway.”

“Do enlighten me.”

“You might not be _nice,_ exactly, but you can _be_ nice sometimes. You can do nice things, even if you’re pretending they aren’t.”

Lester was silent.

Connor said, “Why do you try so hard to make people believe you don’t care?”

When Lester still didn’t say anything, Connor gave in and turned himself back towards Lester. Lester’s head was tilted away, revealing only his profile.

“This is most assuredly turning into my nightmare,” Lester said eventually. “Are you going to attempt to derive a reasonable explanation for my behaviour and analyse my psyche?”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

A sharp gaze was Lester’s only response, which was answer enough.

Well, if that was how it was going to be, Connor could be quiet and moody, too. If Lester wanted silence, Connor would give him silence. That would make their incarceration _so_ much better, neither of them talking, nothing to pass the time but the silence and their own thoughts. Connor could be so quiet, he -

“Is it a respect thing?” Connor asked, the possibility suddenly occurring to him. “Like, you think people won’t respect you if you’re too nice to them?”

Lester sighed in that exaggerated way of his, like other people were a tremendous trial and he wanted to make sure they knew it. “It isn’t a ‘thing’. I simply appreciate qualities such as subtlety and restraint.”

“Overrated. There’s something to be said for making it clear exactly where you stand.”

“Oh? As you and Miss Maitland have done?”

Connor averted his eyes. Abby was really not a subject Connor wanted to be discussing with Lester. Or anyone, come to think of it. “Abby and I are just friends.”

“Please,” Lester sniffed. “I may choose to avoid inane workplace gossip, but a blind idiot could see that the two of you have been playing games since the day you met.”

“Yeah, so maybe I wanted to be more than friends, and I definitely made that clear. But maybe what Abby wanted wasn’t so clear, and maybe now she’s not what I want any more.” Damn. Had he actually said that out loud? To Lester? He was such an idiot.

“Oh, dear. Trouble in paradise?”

“Thank you for your sarcasm. Very helpful.”

Lester sighed again, but quieter, as though it were more genuine. An indication of relenting rather than a plea for ‘oh, look at me, see how I suffer’. “Connor, it sounds like you already know what you want, so you don’t need any help from me. In any case, I don’t know why you would want your boss involved in your love life.”

“Not my boss,” Connor said, focusing his eyes on Lester. “My friend. Aren’t you that, too?”

For a while Lester only regarded him impassively, but then he said, “I suppose my invitation complicated matters somewhat. Blurred the boundaries, so to speak. Perhaps that was a mistake,” he added, lower.

Connor looked down again. He didn’t know why he felt so hurt. “If you don’t want me there, just say so.”

There was a rustle of movement and when Lester spoke next, his voice was coming from jarringly close. “Don’t sulk on my account. If it’s what you want to hear, then yes, I consider you to be more than simply my employee.”

“I don’t want to hear anything that isn’t true.”

“Connor, I consider you to be more than simply my employee,” Lester said, his tone ringing with reluctance but also an undeniable sincerity.

“How much more?” Connor asked. God, Lester was close. He had incredibly lovely eyes. He also smelled as amazing as always, like the expensive bottles in his bathroom, woody and faintly spicy.

Lester breathed in and then out, slowly, like a stall for time. “We’re doing this, then?”

Sometimes Connor wished he could master Lester’s pointed eyebrow raise. He needed to practice in the mirror some more. Preferably when Lester wouldn’t catch him at it. That had been embarrassing. “What, actually talking like normal people? Yeah, we’re doing it.”

“Words can’t be taken back once you say them.”

“Are you planning on saying something you shouldn’t?”

“It’s only… Conversations like this tend to result in awkwardness.”

“Because it wasn’t awkward already?”

Lester chuckled, surprisingly. “Point taken. That’s the thing about being trapped with someone in a confined space. You can’t leave before the awkwardness settles in.”

“You’re good at that,” Connor said, thinking back to every time he and Lester had actually spoken of something real. It wasn’t very many times and they had all occurred after Connor had moved in to Lester’s flat. “Leaving before it gets awkward.”

“It’s a skill I’ve learned to excel at, yes.”

“It means you’re not accountable.”

“Pardon?”

“Whenever you say something, you don’t stick around for the consequences. You can pretend you didn’t say it.”

“I prefer not to say that sort of thing in the first place.”

“Sounds kind of lonely to me,” Connor said, feeling sad. “Sounds like you don’t ever let anyone close to you.”

“Christ,” Lester muttered under his breath. “I was married, you know. Have to get terribly close for that.”

“I think the important word in that sentence is ‘was’.”

Lester’s tone hardened, a warning to drop it. “You know nothing about it.”

So of course, Connor pushed further. “No, I don’t, not really, but I do know you, as well as a person can, and I can make a pretty good guess.”

“Please refrain from doing so.”

“Why? Because it’s _awkward?_ You know what’s really awkward? Living with you when I want to--” Connor stopped and pressed his lips together, not a moment too soon. Actually, a moment too late. Oh, bugger.

Lester seized upon it. “When you want to what?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, no, you can’t get out of this, not after what you said to me about accountability. When you want to what? Tell me, I’m curious.”

“When I want to kiss you, okay?” Connor blurted, because Lester was possibly the most stubborn person Connor knew, and that was saying a lot. Maybe it would be better this way, not having to hide it any more. “When I want to kiss you. When I look at you across the table, or across the room, or on the other side of the bloody hallway and want to kiss you.”

Lester didn’t say anything at all. He barely reacted, the slight parting of his lips and the widening of his eyes the only signs that he had even heard.

Connor picked at the seam of his jeans, miserably. “Guess I’ll be moving out of the flat, then.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Connor repeated, confused. “Because I think this constitutes the kind of awkwardness neither of us can live with.”

“Why do you want to kiss me?” Lester clarified. He seemed genuinely curious.

“Um, Lester, seeing as we’ve already established that you’ve been married, do you really need me to explain that?”

“I’m horrible to you, you said it yourself. Why would you ever want to kiss me?”

“Because that’s the thing. You _aren’t._ You put on this show, like we’re all beneath you, like you don’t care, but you do. Deep down, you really, really do. You wouldn’t--” Connor bit his lip, his mind going places he wanted to forget, back to Stephen, back to the professor. “You wouldn’t do the things you do if you didn’t care.”

“Most people don’t want to have to work so hard for that sort of thing,” Lester said, his eyes downcast, and Connor was sorry he’d ever said anything about Lester’s marriage. Lester was right. Connor didn’t know anything about it.

“I’m not most people. Don’t you remind me of that all the time?” Connor tried for a faint, half-smile, but Lester didn’t follow suit.

“Too often, I suppose.”

This wasn’t going well at all. Connor had expected Lester to be appalled, perhaps sickened. He hadn’t expected that he would only make Lester sad. “You know, maybe you should just take the whole thing as a compliment. Someone likes you. That’s nice, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so, though one could ask for something more in one’s admirers,” Lester said, sounding more like himself.

“Would you prefer Danny?”

“Dear lord, no,” Lester said, quickly enough to make Connor laugh. “I’m not certain any of you are precisely what I’d ask for, but you’ll do, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” Connor said dryly. “That makes me feel so special.”

“If you wanted to feel special, perhaps you should have chosen another to bestow your affections upon.”

“Believe me, I tried.”

“Then it seems we’re stuck.” Lester was examining his nails, like he had nothing more important to concern himself with than whether he was due for a manicure or not.

“Seems so,” Connor said, and then he thought for a second. “We’ve been going round in circles, but we keep skipping the important bit. Lester, do _you_ like _me_?”

“I left secondary school a long time ago. I’d like not to revisit it.”

“I’m being serious. Do you like me?”

“I thought we went over this. You forced me to admit to my slightly friendly feelings towards you.” The overemphasis on ‘slightly’ was entirely deliberate, clearly.

“That’s not what I mean. I mean the rest, the part you keep avoiding. Do you…” Connor swallowed. It seemed so ludicrous, but then, what about this situation wasn’t? “Have you ever wanted to kiss me?”

“You flatter yourself.”

Connor’s heart felt like a weight in his chest but Lester looked more uncomfortable than anything, like it was closer to the truth than he wanted to express. “Maybe not. I think that’s what this entire thing is about. You want to kiss me.”

Lester wouldn’t meet Connor’s eyes and that was probably more damning than anything he could have said. “I want nothing of the sort and I’d thank you to put the ridiculous notion out of your head.”

Everything became so brilliantly clear. “Oh my God. You do! You want to kiss me! Lester, please, I would’ve let you throw me against the wall anytime you wanted.” The image was perhaps somewhat too vividly appealing. Connor shifted.

“Your leaps of logic are truly astounding. I don’t know where you’re getting this from.”

But it all made sense now. Lester’s discomfort and the things he’d been choosing to be bothered about. The way he didn’t seem to care that Connor had admitted to fantasising about having Lester’s tongue down his throat. Even the fact that it had been Lester who’d brought up the whole confession of affection thing in the first place.

Connor inched closer to Lester. “If I kissed you now, what would you do?”

Though he didn’t actually move, Lester tensed like he was putting himself on guard. “Begin contemplating a sexual harassment charge?”

“Would you really?” There wasn’t anything separating them now but breath. Connor’s gaze kept dropping to Lester’s mouth. His lips looked so soft and Connor desperately wanted to know what he tasted like.

“No,” Lester said, his eyes wide and serious. Then he mumbled something about, “Bloody nightmare,” and pressed his hands to the back of Connor’s head and pulled him in.

Coffee, and a hint of mint. That was what Lester tasted like. His lips were as soft as they looked.

And that was how, sticking his head through the ventilation shaft and whistling, Danny found them.

**_End_ **


End file.
